blog 37

I have no clue how well I did on my analytical research paper. I feel pretty good about it but I also felt pretty good about my first and second drafts and I did not get the grades that I was hoping for on those assignments. My introduction and supporting paragraphs were pretty strong and I think I had a good amount of evidence but I’m worried about my conclusion, as well as the solidity of my real world connection and my thesis statement. The final copy of my analytical research paper doesn’t look anything like my first two drafts, I completely changed the direction of my paper and because of that I don’t really know how good my argument is. The first two drafts were helpful in the sense that they improved my writing ability but it was my understanding that the purpose of those drafts was to help get feedback from the teacher on our argument, real world connection and other key pieces of our paper but that feedback isn’t relevant if you don’t use the same argument in the final paper and I think that was the case for a lot of people, myself included. Wow that was a long sentence. I do feel a little better knowing that we can revise the paper if we aren’t satisfied with our grade but I really don’t want to have to work on this more. Especially because I’m going to be a lot busier in the coming weeks and I don’t want to have to add this to my list of things I need to accomplish.

blog 36

This blog is about a hypothetical situation as well as a personal anecdote relative to our commonplace paper. My commonplace paper is about history told through music. For my personal connection I think I’m going to talk about how the song We Didn’t Start The Fire by Billy Joel. The song quickly rattles off important events in chronological order that took place from the 40’s, when Joel was born, to 1989, the time when Joel wrote the song. This song contains 119 references to events that were current during those years and by dissecting the lyrics you can easily see America’s history during that time period. As for my hypothetical situation I may compare learning with music to learning through a textbook. Numerous studies suggest that when subjects such as English are taught through song they are not only easier to learn but they are retained better than things learned the traditional way. Hypothetical situation idea number one: What if, instead of having traditional worksheets for homework, students were required to listen to certain songs that taught the students about history. This would take less time for students to complete and there would be less work on the teacher’s part. Also because of the simplicity of the assignment more students may do the work and in theory would learn more from the songs than they would from completing worksheets. I don’t really like that hypothetical situation and I would appreciate any suggestions that you may have on either how to improve my current one or ideas for a new hypothetical situation.

blog 35

One of the articles I read was called Coke Zero, the Deadliest Beverage…or So They Say, and it was about how Coke Zero isn’t as bad for you as the media makes it out to be. In the article the author discussed the main ingredients and revealed that although some of the ingredients can in fact be deadly, the amounts found in Coke Zero aren’t nearly enough to have any adverse effects on the human body. The article was very well written from a style and voice standpoint and based on the sources referenced throughout the article it is easy to see that this author did his research. Furthermore, the findings from the research were presented in a manner that was easy to read and not too confusing for those of us who are not familiar with the specific chemical compounds discussed within the article. The article started out by discussing how Coca-Cola advertises the drink as a healthy alternative to the real Coke because it contains no calories and no fat. The author also discusses how the drink has been portrayed by the media as a deadly drink that is one of the least healthy things that a person can consume. The author then goes on to state the most prominent ingredients in the drink and how they can be considered deadly and also why they are not deadly in the concentration that is found within the drink, Coke Zero. Overall the article was well written and easy to both read and comprehend.

blog 34

Today we spend twenty minutes coming up with possible topics for our common place essay and out of the 50 sum things I wrote down I had to choose one. The topic I chose was, history through music. This relates to the Jaynestown episode of Firefly when the crew is in the bar and they hear the man singing the ballad about Jayne. Much like music was used in that scene to tell a story of the history of how Jayne came to be a hero I want to write about how music is used all over the world to tell stories. These stories told through song are called ballads. There are many popular songs that most people don’t know are considered ballads such as: Hey There Delilah, Stairway to Heaven, Bohemian Rhapsody, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, 21 Guns, and many other popular songs. I’m not really sure what type of ballad I want to write about but we still have a lot of time to work out the details. Another idea that I thought about writing my common place paper on is dictatorship. Dictatorship is a pretty common topic so it wouldn’t be hard to find supporting information to help my paper and it relates to the Jaynestown episode because the government in the town that they land in is communistic in many ways. Communism is my backup plan incase the whole ballad thing doesn’t work out but I want to write about ballads rather than communism because I fell that communism is just to broad of a topic.

blog 33

I have a really bad headache today. I don’t know what caused it or why it hasn’t gone away despite the many Advils and Tylenols I’ve taken thus far but the fact of the mater is that my head hurts. This sucks. Every now and then I get these headaches that start out pretty mild and progressively get worse, this is now of those headaches and the worst part is that I know its just going to get worse. I normally just take some medicine that sleep for the rest of the day but unfortunately I have a couple of assignments that I’ve put off for a while that I now need to do so I can’t go to bed now. I should really start doing my work ahead of time but normally I just think, hey, its not due for a while longer so I don’t need to start on it yet and I just keep putting it off until it becomes like this where I can no longer put my assignments off anymore and it sucks because I really don’t want to do work right now. I might just end up sleeping anyways and put off this work for one more day. I’ll probably end up doing that because I don’t want to be awake when this headache gets worse. Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do, one more day can’t make that big of a difference and I wont be able to work well with this headache anyways.

blog 32

I took piano lessons for about six years but when my family moved from Pittsburgh to New Albany I stopped taking lessons. When I stopped taking lessons I was pretty good but now, not so much. I still play from time to time but now when I want to learn to play a song it takes much longer than it used to and I normally don’t end up learning the whole song. Looking back I wish I had continued taking piano lessons when my family moved but now its too late for that. I would kill to be able to play as well as Billy Joel, or Elton John. It always relaxes me to sit down at a nice piano and just start playing but there are only a few songs that I can play perfectly just from memory, and those songs aren’t too complicated but they sound pretty good. I want to learn how to play jazz piano someday. It would be cool to be able to just sit down at a piano and start laying down jazz chords. My biggest problem with learning how to play different songs is that I often want to learn songs that are beyond my skill level and I don’t have the patience to really learn to play them well. I want to be able to play the songs but I don’t want to put the required amount of energy into learning how. I guess that’s true for a lot of things in life, you want the reward but you don’t really want to work for it.

blog 31

I love driving. A little while before I turned 16 my parents bought a new car and they decided to keep the old one (a 2001 Acura MDX) so that I would have a car to drive. I love that car. Its kind of big but its really comfortable and pretty fast for a car its size. Since I got the car I’ve made a few adjustments to it. I put a new stereo in it with an iPod hookup and I installed some subwoofers in the trunk. Subwoofers are those giant speakers that make the booming noises and if you ever pull up to a car and can hear the trunk rattling hard, its safe to assume that person has subs. One of my friends had some subs in his car and after hearing what they did I knew I wanted them. I bought two twelve inch subs and an amp for a little under $100 on craigslist but when I went to get them installed the cheapest place that I could find wanted $300 for installation so I decided it was something I could do myself. It was a huge pain in the ass. Installing those subs was probably one of the top five hardest and most frustrating things I’ve ever had to do in my life but it was well worth it. After driving with subs for a long time I’ve become accustomed to the loud booming base and to listen to music without it just seems weird.

blog 30

I found my favorite watch today. It was missing for about three weeks and I looked everywhere for it. Except my backpack. I’m not sure why it was in there or how it happened but I was looking for a pen today and I unzipped the little pocket on the right side that I never go into and as I was reaching around to see if there was something to write with in it I found my watch. It’s a pretty cool watch I bought a while ago for myself. Its silver with a leather band and it has an automatic movement. What that means is that it never needs a battery, its powered by gravity. In the watch world there are two main types of movements (btw the movement is the thing that makes the watch run, its behind the dial) there are quartz movements, which are powered by a battery, and there are mechanical movements, which are powered when the mainspring is wound up. Within mechanical movements there are two main types, hand wound, which means you have to manually turn the crown (the thing you set the time with) and self winding, or automatic. The way automatic movements work is that there is a small weight on a rotor in the back of the movement and whenever the watch moves the weight moves due to the gravitational force and when the weight moves it winds the mainspring. I’m a big fan of watches and I’m really glad I found mine.

blog 29

Do I clearly explain this scene?


In episode seven of he series Firefly the crew travels to Canton to complete a job. Jayne, a mercenary who is part of the crew, seems apprehensive about traveling to Canton and reveals that several years ago he robbed the magistrate of the town. Four years prior, Jayne and an accomplice robbed the magistrate; while they were attempting to escape their aircraft was attacked and Jayne was forced to dump the stolen money, along with several other things including his accomplice, in order to make the aircraft lighter. When the crew arrives in Canton they find a statue of Jayne and later overhear people singing a song about him. After much discussion it is discovered that the money that Jayne dumped landed in the middle of Canton and the impoverished population, mostly made up of indentured slaves owned by the magistrate, grew to view Jayne as a Robin Hood like hero whom they now worship. After the magistrate realizes that Jayne is back in town he summons Stitch, Jayne’s former partner whom Jayne left for dead. The magistrate arms Stitch with a shotgun and sends him to kill Jayne who is nearby at a ceremony thrown by the community in his honor. Stitch arrives at the ceremony and after discharging his weapon into the air in order to silence the crowd and gain their attention he informs everyone that Jayne is no hero. Stitch explains that Jayne never intended to give the money to the people, he only dumped the money in order to get away and he didn’t dump the money until after he had dumped everything else from the ship, including other cargo, chairs, and Stitch himself. After making his speech Stitch aims and fires at Jayne but despite what was said about him moments earlier one of the community members jumps in front of Jayne and blocks the shot. The enraged Jayne draws a knife from his belt and after attacking and killing Stitch he returns to the lifeless body of the boy who saved him and yells at the crowd, unable to fathom why they still revere him after hearing what actually happened. The still emotional Jayne knocks over the statue of him and the crew of Serenity proceeds to board the ship and leave Canton.

blog 28

The sushi at the Ohio Union kinda sucks, I got the spicy tuna rolls today and I was extremely disappointed. I’m no sushi connoisseur or food snob but what I ate from that plastic container didn’t deserve to be called sushi. First of all the tuna was bland and pale in color and the only thing that made this spicy was the wasabi that I had to add so that there was at least some flavor to the food. Also the rice had started to dry out which gave the tuna an unpleasant crunchy consistency similar to that of Doritos, good when you are expecting it, not so much when you aren’t. To add to the general bad quality of this sushi it cost $8. If I pay $8 for sushi I expect a little more than tuna even a cat would refuse and rice that felt as if it hadn’t been cooked at all. As you can probably tell by now this sushi pissed me off. I like sushi, I like sushi a lot and when I saw that the union had sushi I got excited because everything else I’ve had there was delicious and so I guess I just expected the same of the sushi. Never again. Next time I’m there I’ll stick to something I know is good like the salmon burger, the French fries, or my current favorite, the grilled cheese Panini with 4 cheese and tomato. I love the grilled cheese. The first time I ordered it I didn’t realize it had tomato, which is probably a good thing considering I don’t like tomato and had I known it was there I might not have ordered it. Now I’m hungry so I’m gonna go eat. Bye.

blog 27

I need to start my paper. Today when we did that outline activity at the end of class I realized how far behind I was on my paper. Neither my first nor second draft was very good so I don’t really know what I’m going to do for my paper. I’m pretty sure that my second draft will be able to serve as a skeleton that I can build my paper around but I might just have to completely start writing a new paper. How far are you guys on your papers? I feel like I should have started working on the paper by now, or at least figured out what were supposed to do for it. Also I have no clue what I’m going to talk about tomorrow during that meeting. I have some ideas for my paper but I feel like twenty minutes isn’t going to be enough time to discuss them. It also seems like I should have more done for my paper than what I have complete at the moment. I don’t really have anything left to talk about and my last several sentences were kind of redundant but I still need to write another fifty words or so, so I guess I’ll just talk about how I need to write more until I have reached the two hundred and fifty mark. Wow that was a long sentence… too long of a sentence. Well it looks like I’m almost done writing so now I’ll say goodbye.

blog 26

For now I’m all caught up on blog posts (I just posted three of them to cover this past weekend) but I decided why stop now, I’m on a roll so I’m about to do something that I’ve never done before. Turn in work early. Is that even allowed? I’m pretty sure it is. I hope it is. I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t be allowed to post early so I’m just going to go ahead and do it. My last three posts were about my Halloween plans but I’m going to switch it up a bit for this post because no progress has been made on my costume/housing issue since the last post. Yesterday I saw Jackass 3D with a few friends and it was fuggin hilarious! The movie was awesome but it seemed really short. Although I laughed so hard I almost started crying there were some stunts that they preformed that I could never see myself doing, no matter how much I was paid. Every single thing they did resulted in at least one of the participants lying on the ground writhing in pain/crying and more than a few of the stunts ended up with either a broken bone, stitches, or loss of consciousness. That being said, the movie was awesome. I saw the last two movies and this one was easily the best. With many movies the sequels are never as good as the originals but that was not the case with Jackass 3D.

blog 25

So still no word on whom I’m going to be staying with for Halloween but there’s still plenty of time. I figure worst case Alex will just sneak me in through a side door or something. As for my costume I’ve made some progress. At the moment I have three out of five of the components for my costume. I have jeans, brown dress shoes, and the glasses. I still need to find a red and white striped shirt, and a red and white hat. Later on today I’m going to try to make a trip to the thrift store an hopefully I will find at least one, if not both of my missing pieces. As far as the shirt goes, all I need is something with large horizontal red and white stripes. A long-sleeved t-shirt would be ideal but I would be willing to settle for a normal t-shirt, a sweater, a polo, or maybe a jacket. I thought about a button down but that just wouldn’t look rite, especially if I can’t find a hat. I figure that if I can find a shirt that looks really good it will be pretty obvious who I am supposed to be but if I can’t then I might have to go with the hat. I don’t have anything against hats but I just feel like its not going to be very easy to find one that looks rite. It needs to be a white beanie with a red pompom on the top and the bottom of the hat has to be red.

blog 24

After a lot of consideration and some helpful comments I decided I’m going with the Waldo costume. I looked online at actual premade costumes you can buy and I found that most of them were just a red and white striped shirt, glasses, and the hat. I also looked at the real Waldo and it looks like he wears the white and red striped shirt, glasses, the beanie, jeans, and brown loafers or some kind of dress shoe and sometimes he has a cane. For my rendition of the Waldo costume I’m going to wear a red and white striped polo, or possibly a sweater, a pair of blue jeans, brown dress shoes, the hat (I don’t really care about the hat that much but if I can find one cheap I’ll buy it) and for the glasses I’m going with my idea from yesterdays blog and I’m removing the lenses from 3D glasses but I decided to forgo the cane. I know Halloween is still almost two weeks away but I want to get this out of the way while I have to so I can get back to school and stuff. This year for Halloween I’m driving up to OU with my friend Josh. The only problem is at the moment I don’t have anyone to stay with. I was originally going to stay with my friend Alex but he and his roommate are already hosting people and so is my other friend Aaron. Luckily Halloween is still a couple of weeks away and both of them are looking for people for me to stay with.

blog 23

So this is my first blog about anything blog. I’m trying to write this but I’m kind of distracted with picking out a Halloween costume at the moment. Right now my top choices are hotdog suit, Waldo, or possibly a pimp. The hotdog suit is pretty easy but its about $50 with shipping and that’s $50 that I don’t really have. For the Waldo costume I was thinking I could go to the thrift store and just find a red and white striped polo and then wear a pair of jeans and pop the lenses out of a pair of 3D glasses for the glasses. I don’t know what I would do for that hat. I might just not wear a hat if I decide to be Waldo. For the pimp costume I think I have a purple fuzzy hat somewhere (don’t ask why) and I could once again make a visit to the thrift store to try to find a purple suit. I could also get a cane or something from the Halloween store. I think I’ll probably just end up doing the Waldo costume because it’s the easiest and most likely going to be the cheapest. It also is probably going to turn out the best because it’s a pretty simple look; just the striped shirt, jeans, glasses, and a red and white beanie if I can find one. I’ll have to put some more thought into this and I’ll get back to you tomorrow. So many choices…

blog 22

Background:In episode seven of he series Firefly the crew travels to Canton to complete a job. Jayne, a mercenary who is part of the crew, seems apprehensive about traveling to Canton and reveals that several years ago he robbed the magistrate of the town. Four years prior, Jayne and an accomplice robbed the magistrate; while they were attempting to escape their aircraft was attacked and Jayne was forced to dump the stolen money, along with several other things including his accomplice, in order to make the aircraft lighter. When the crew arrives in Canton they find a statue of Jayne and later overhear people singing a song about him. After much discussion it is discovered that the money that Jayne dumped landed in the middle of Canton and the impoverished population, mostly made up of indentured slaves owned by the magistrate, grew to view Jayne as a Robin Hood like hero whom they now worship. After the magistrate realizes that Jayne is back in town he summons Stitch, Jayne’s former partner whom Jayne left for dead. The magistrate arms Stitch with a shotgun and sends him to kill Jayne who is nearby at a ceremony thrown by the community in his honor. Stitch arrives at the ceremony and after discharging his weapon into the air in order to silence the crowd and gain their attention he informs everyone that Jayne is no hero. Stitch explains that Jayne never intended to give the money to the people, he only dumped the money in order to get away and he didn’t dump the money until after he had dumped everything else from the ship, including other cargo, chairs, and Stitch himself.
My thesis is that people practice religion not because it makes sense but because it gives them hope.

blog 21

“In one of the experiments, volunteers were told to bring a lucky charm with them. Then the researchers took it away to take a picture. People brought in all kinds of items, from old stuffed animals to wedding rings to lucky stones. Half of the volunteers were given their charm back before the test started; the other half were told there was a problem with the camera equipment and they would get it back later. Volunteers who had their lucky charm did better at a memory game on the computer, and other tests showed that this difference was because they felt more confident. They also set higher goals for themselves.” (Damisch, 1). I want to integrate this quote into my paper because it discusses how people’s beliefs effect what they do. My thesis deals with how people need their beliefs and having something to believe in helps them so this quote could work will if integrated properly into my paper. Another quote that I was looking at incorporating into my paper is: “The fact that gay and lesbian individuals have been discriminated against by society, particularly by traditional religions, may have challenged them to look beyond the tenets of organized religions and to seek more intensely for answers to the meaning of existence and of faith.” This quote would also work with my thesis because it deals with homosexuals and how religion helps them. This relates to my thesis because my thesis deals with how religion and beliefs help people which links to the scene in my episode in which the mudders rely on their faith in Jayne. Homosexuals and mudders relate because both of them are suppressed peoples.

blog 20

In the episode Jaynestown in the series Firefly the scene in which the boy sacrifices himself for Jayne supports my argument that even though things may not be what they seem, everyone needs something to believe in. Before Stitch revealed what actually happened on that day Jayne was viewed as a hero and it gave the people of Canton hope that there were good people out there and someone cared about them. Even after the truth was revealed people still viewed Jayne as a hero because they needed something to believe in. My thesis is that even when presented with evidence that disproves a religion or belief, the majority of people will choose to remain faithful to those beliefs because having something to believe in gives people hope and people can’t survive without hope. I read an article on cults and one of the reasons people join cults is because they feel that their lives are empty and they are depressed. People join cults in order to gain some sort of feeling of fulfillment in their lives. People also join cults in order to give their lives a sense of purpose and to give them something to believe in. This relates to the episode I watched and my thesis because Jayne gave the people of Canton something to believe in much the same way cults give people something to believe in. The article also talks about how it is extremely difficult to convince people to leave cults because the teachings of the cults become engrained in their minds. This is similar to how when Jayne tried to tell them that he wasn’t a hero the people didn’t listen and continued worshiping him.